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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26704336">the bite</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/starkswinterfelling/pseuds/starkswinterfelling'>starkswinterfelling</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M, Gen, Multi</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 06:08:04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,357</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26704336</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/starkswinterfelling/pseuds/starkswinterfelling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Cursed wounds are a nasty business.</p>
<p>--</p>
<p>Bill Weasley reflects on the lingering trauma of his scars.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Fleur Delacour/Bill Weasley</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>15</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>the bite</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>just a little one shot i wrote from an rpg where i've been playing bill, and i started to muse about what could make a cursed wound rather than just a physical one. big fuck you to JKR as always tho.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He remembers pretending to be asleep a lot.<br/>
<br/>
No-one really questioned it at the time - cursed wounds are unpredictable at best, and none of them really had any idea about what state he was going to end up in. But Bill Weasley was awake for a lot longer than any of them knew.<br/>
<br/>
Or at least, he hopes they didn’t know. It’s not like it’s something that they’d expect of him. Bill was a man who faced things head-on and never in halves, and pretending to be asleep to confront a new reality has never been his way before or since then. But something silent and crushing had him caught in his sickbed and he’d done little to fight his way out of its grasp.<br/>
<br/>
“He was so handsome,” his mother had wept, more than once as she pushed his hair back with gentle hands that made his stomach ache with love - and she avoided his face, over and over again. “Always such a good boy - it isn’t fair - “<br/>
<br/>
The more conscious he was of it the more it hurt.<br/>
<br/>
He’d been on the end of more than his fair share of nasty curses before. His job landed him in places designed that no man should ever enter and live to tell the tale. But even amongst all that danger, there always lingered some sense of control over his fate. Bill had only what he considered to be a healthy amount of fear when he was by himself, tinkering in the pitch black of a tomb with an ancient curse. The kind that kept you on your toes, stopped you from being reckless - enough to make you realise when it was time to turn around.<br/>
<br/>
When he’d been knocked to ground by the full force of Fenrir Greyback, Bill had been truly afraid.<br/>
<br/>
Bill had assumed it would be easier to pretend to be asleep when it was just his father that was there with him. It was a rarer occasion, but often quieter - and with less said, perhaps there’d be less burden of expectation. But sometimes he could lay for a full hour with his Dad not saying anything at all, feeling like he couldn’t take a breath for fear of breaking the fragile pretence between them that everyone and everything was fine.<br/>
<br/>
But everything was not fine - Dumbledore was dead, and so had he nearly been, and his face had felt like it was <em>on fire without any respite -</em><br/>
<br/>
It was a sort of pain that was spiritual. Physically it hurt, it hurt more than any hex or jinx or broken bone he’d ever had in his entire life - it seared and itched and burned and resisted any help it was offered from ointments and potions that were pointlessly dabbed on it. But he reckoned he could have dealt with that, if it had just been that. He could have grit his teeth and borne it.<br/>
<br/>
But there was a residual pain that he could not begin to describe. The curse was etched deeper into his skin than the lacerations themselves, and the awful angry blackness of it felt like it was stretching its tendrils into the secret corners of his soul.<br/>
<br/>
Ginny visited more than any of their other siblings - she almost became as permanent a fixture by his bedside as his parents and fiancee. He pretended with her too, even though she had more of a nose for bullshit than any of them. But even she did not seem to consider the fact that as he laid there for hours unresponsive, he was not healing but stagnating. It’s only later that he supposes that perhaps so was she. It was easier for them both to just be there silently and unknowingly in support of the other’s desire to simply exist to get through.<br/>
<br/>
Because it was more peaceful to pretend than be truly awake - and certainly more peaceful than being asleep, where he still couldn’t escape the excruciating pain but also was plagued by memory. The memory of the weight he couldn’t shake, the malicious glee he could sense through the infliction, and the sinking realisation of his failure to hold onto control of his own life as it slipped away from him.<br/>
<br/>
And even the act of waking from that held no respite, feeling like when he managed to grasp onto some consciousness that he was choking with searing anger, dread and fear in equal measure.<br/>
<br/>
He pretended the least with Fleur - in his beckoning years this fact helped ease his own guilt for not pulling through quicker for his family’s sake. It was easier somehow - he suspects it’s because she did very little to treat him any differently. She could notice when his breathing would change and she would ask him what he thought of something for their wedding - what he thought of handmade favours, or whether he cared for this colour for chair backs - so he would crack his eyes open and answer.<br/>
<br/>
“I’d marry you in Knockturn Alley,” he croaked once, his voice scratchy from lack of use and attempting a smile small enough not to ask for more pain. “But that pink is awful.”<br/>
<br/>
“Yes,” she sniffed, a gentle hand on his thigh. “You should tell your mother this, I think.”<br/>
<br/>
He nodded, letting his eyes fall closed. “It’s on the to-do list.”<br/>
<br/>
“At least I am marrying a man with taste,” she said.<br/>
<br/>
“I try.”<br/>
<br/>
And he would feel her rest her head on his chest and he could almost pretend they were in their bed with her familiar weight on him and the smell of her everywhere.<br/>
<br/>
He could breathe easier when he was breathing in Fleur.<br/>
<br/>
“Cursed wounds are a nasty business,” Pomfrey said to him, one brief moment she’d caught him alert thanks to Fleur’s presence. She should have sent him to St. Mungo’s but with the state of the world and the state of his face, no-one had even brought this up as a suggestion. “You’re looking better by the day Mr. Weasley, but don’t be surprised if they never heal.”<br/>
<br/>
And so they didn’t.<br/>
<br/>
He would go years after the fact - after finding the will to pull himself out of that bed and back up, to putting himself back together, and fighting wars and forcing himself through sheer determination to forget whatever the hell it was that hurt him - and still when he least expected it the pain would come as shocking and brutal as it had from the first.<br/>
<br/>
Dominique was only a toddler, she couldn’t have understood what it meant to have scuffed her dad’s face when they were playing. Even he couldn’t really - the scars looked as ugly as ever, but were long sealed - he’d been in plenty of situations worse and more painful than a kick to the face from his toddler but -<br/>
<br/>
- but quite suddenly in a jolt of lightning his whole body feels like it’s filled with black poisonous tar - he can feel painful hate and fear as vividly as ever - and relives the moment all over again of when he watched the life leaves Fenrir Greyback’s eyes under his own hands -<br/>
<br/>
But she’s just a baby, and just sees her Dad flinch away from her so violently that it scares her - so she cries.<br/>
<br/>
And after that second, that long awful second, when he comes back to himself, he can chase away the burning on his face and the ghostly pain lingering somewhere else - as he wraps her up and apologises and laughs as she works herself up into a little tantrum, because this little fighter of his swings so quickly between being sweet and easy to being a nightmare that he can’t help but love her because she is so him and so Fleur that it makes his heart melt.<br/>
<br/>
She won’t remember it, and that’s fine - better than that, it’s good. It would mean nothing if they’d all suffered - him, his family, his friends, <em>the world</em> - and they couldn’t raise children who didn’t know what it was like to feel pain like that.<br/>
<br/>
Still, he has to pretend to sleep again that night.</p>
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